6. TABLE 01 CONTENTS
page
INTRODUCTION 7
I. THE UNITED STATES:
A SOCIETY IN CRISIS 9
U.S. Capitalism 10
The Reign of Monopoly 15
The Crisis of U .S. Society 22
II. THE WORLD SETTING 26
The World Balance of Forces 26
The "American Century"-A Vain Dream . . . . 29
The Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism 31
"Anti-Communism' and Chauvinism-
Designs for Catastrophe 33
The Revolutionary Process 34
The Fight for Peace 36
III. THE FORCES OF PROGRESS 39
The Spirit of Rebellion 39
`
The Working Class : 42
The Black Liberation Movement 54
Chicano Liberation
64
L~ N
Puerto Rican Liberation 67
/ Indian Liberation 68
The Jewish People 70
The Fight Against Racism 71
Allies Against Monopoly 73
7" *YO LA 7-14
14
IV. THE PATH AHEAD 81
The Face of the Enemy 81
Toward a New People's Party 83
Radical Reform 85
7. Reform and Revolution 87
The Socialist Path 91
V. THE SOCIALIST GOAL 96
The Nature of Socialist Society 96
Socialism and Communism 104
Socialism Works 105
What Socialism Can Do 107
VI. THE COMMUNIST PARTY 112
Marxism-Leninism 112
The Communist Party of the United States . . . .115
VII. OUR RELATIONS WITH OTHERS 120
Guiding Principles 120
Communists and the Left 121
Communism and Religion 124
World Relations 126
AN INVITATION 129
8. INTRODUCTION
Wherever one looks, there is struggle in the United States today .
People are on the march. More and more are engaged in struggles
for peace, for black and brown liberation, for economic advance-
ment. More and more are seeking fundamental solutions. There is
radicalization. There is a growing political Left .
Millions are turning against the stale slanders of anti-Commun-
ism, used for so long to stifle people's struggles . These millions
want to know what this is all about . They are interested in the
views of the Communist Party of the United States, which for
fifty years has been a current in our country's political life and a
significant organizer and participant in people's struggles .
Like other Americans, we Communists take pride in the genius
and skill of our country's workers, farmers and scientists, who have
created the world's most productive industry, the most bountiful
agriculture. We take pride in our nation's democratic 'and revo-
lutionary heritage, created by the struggles of our people.
The country our people have built provides the means for a
good and abundant life. Yet tens of millions live in misery. Why?
Tens of millions suffer bitter racial oppression. Why? Masses of
working people are afflicted by growing economic insecurity. Why?
Wars and the danger of mass annihilation hang over everybody .
Why?
7
9. This glaring contradiction between the possible and the actual
is not an accident. It is not due to the faults of this or that politician .
It is inherent in an economic system which divides the people into
haves and have-nots, a system in which private profit is the driv-
ing force of the class that dominates this country.
The United States is ripe for basic social change . The goal of
the Communist Party is to help our people bring about that change
and to make it stickto wipe out poverty, racism and war by de-
stroying the monster which nurtures them. In this Program we will
show that this monster is capitalism, and that its replacement by
socialism represents the only fundamental solution to the critical
problems the American people now face.
It is fitting that our Program appears as we approach the 200th
anniversary of the birth of our country in the Revolutionary War,
at a time when the question of social revolution once again arises
in new times and new forms.
We invite you to read our Program. We hope you will find your-
self in agreement with its basic ideas.
8
10. I. THE UNITED STATES : A SOCIETY
IN CRISIS
A Society in Decay
Our society has been widely proclaimed the society of affluence
-the shining example of what capitalism can accomplish . But be-
neath the symbols of affluence, beneath the glitter of polished
chrome and the outlines of television antennas, lie the symptoms
of crisis, of growing corruption and decay. Ours is a sick society,
and its sickness pervades every aspect of its being .
Endowed with a continent rich in natural resources, our rising
technological capacity enables us to produce an abundance of
material blessings of life for all . Instead, there is mounting economic
insecurity, persistent unemployment and poverty for millions.
Hunger and starvation are all too common .
The high-sounding, hypocritical pretensions to democracy and
the leadership of a "free world" cloak the brutal racist oppression
of 35 million Black, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican and Indian
people within the United States .
Oppression and violence assume monstrous proportions . Assas-
sinations of public figures have become commonplace, as have
murders, bombings and burnings by the hoodlums of the racist
ultra-Right. Unbridled police brutality and killing prevail; social
protest and rebellion are met with armed force; mass killing is
practiced against oppressed minorities .
The rulers of our country wage wars of mass atrocity, as in
Vietnam. They intervene with armed force, CIA plots and other
means to destroy freedom everywhere for the superprofits of the
giant U.S. trusts.
Our economy is one of enormous waste. One-tenth of our entire
national product goes down the rathole of military spending
while public services and social welfare needs go increasingly
unmet and masses of people go hungry.
For the sake of corporate profits our air and water are in-
9
11. creasingly polluted and our food contaminated .
Monopoly capital seeks to prostitute and degrade science and
culture, to sacrifice them to war-making and the relentless drive
for profit The vicious ideology of racism, fostered in every con-
ceivable way by the big monopolies which profit from it, debases
white Americans . On all sides the American people are subjected
to dehumanization, to undermining of moral and ethical standards.
On these and many other counts our capitalist society stands
indicted.
We shall show that socialism can replace this outmoded system
with a society in which freedom, culture and beauty exist for all,
in which there is no poverty, no war, no racism . We shall show
that socialism is the way to a future in which man's scientific
genius and technical skills, his knowledge and his creative im-
agination will be used to realize the potential for an abundant,
creative, rewarding life for everyone .
U.S. Capitalism
Ours is the leading land of capitalism . Technologically ours is
by far the most advanced of all capitalist countries . Here industrial
production is concentrated in the greatest degree in huge plants
equipped with the most modem machinery, each employing thous-
ands and tens of thousands of workers . Here mass production,
highly organized and coordinated, with a high degree of division
of labor and cooperation, has attained the most advanced de-
velopment among capitalist countries. As technology progresses,
this socialized character of production grows and increasingly
permeates all branches of industry and commerce . With it grows
the productivity of human labor .
A System of Exploitation
However, the ownership of this colossal productive apparatus,
on which the life of the entire nation depends, rests in private
hands-in the hands of a small and shrinking group of ever more
wealthy and powerful capitalists motivated solely by the drive for
10
12. ever greater private profit . Facing them are the millions who work
on the job, the mass of workers whose labor is the source of all
material values produced.
These own no means of production, no 'source of income beyond
their own capacity to work-their labor power. This they must
sell to the capitalists in order to live.
The capitalist employs the wage worker only so long as his
labor produces profits . The worker must turn out products whose
value includes not only his wages but also an additional amount
which goes to the capitalist . This unpaid labor of the wage worker
is the basic source of capitalist profit. Workers, who sell their
labor power for wages, and capitalists who buy labor power for
the profit they can extract from it, are the two basic economic
classes in our society-the exploited and the exploiters .
In the United States today this class division is extremely
sharp. Some 500 giant corporations control the national economy .
And some 5,000 corporate directors are the country's economic
rulers. On the other side, more than four-fifths of all who are gain-
fully employed work for wages or salaries . In short, a wealthy
handful exploits the vast majority of the 200 million Americans .
The two classes are in unending and irreconcilable conflict be-
cause their fundamental interests clash. The capitalist drive for
profits leads inevitably to a never-ending drive to force down
wages and other costs of production. It leads also to transforming
the worker to a mere appendage to an ever more monstrous pro-
ductive apparatus. Against these drives the working class is com-
pelled to engage in ceaseless struggle .
This is the class struggle . It is an uphill battle. Far from leading
an easy affluent life, workers in the U.S. are subjected to ever more
intensive exploitation. In no other country are workers subjected too
the killing speedup, physical maiming and industrial deaths which
prevail in the United States. Every year some 15,000 workers are
killed on the job, well over 2 million are maimed or disabled, and
200,000 are crippled by job-related diseases. These are casualties in
the class war. And despite higher wages, won through hard strug-
gles and strikes, workers get a decreasing share of their product.
In manufacturing real earnings per unit of output fell ten per cent
11
13. in the last decade alone.
What the Labor Department calls a "moderate" budget for an
urban family of four came to $10,300 in 1969. The annual earnings
of production workers in manufacturing-among the better-paid
workers-were one-third below this figure. To come anywhere
near this standard, therefore the average worker must have either
a second job or a second breadwinner in the family . Or he must,
as most workers do, go increasingly into debt.
Such are the harsh realities of life for the great mass of workers
in our "affluent' society.
Further, under capitalism the constant introduction of new, more
efficient machinery is designed solely to grind out greater profits .
Therefore it leads not to a corresponding rise in the economic
welfare of the workers but to growing displacement from jobs .
New jobs are not created fast enough to take care of the growth
in the labor force and those being displaced by automation . Hence
there is greater insecurity for all workers. With this the struggle
between the classes sharpens . And with this the gap grows between
expanding ability to produce and restriction of the purchasing
power of the consumers, the masses of working people. The very
ability to produce abundance increasingly gives rise to problems
of unemployment and poverty. In ever greater measure there de-
velops what is ironically termed "the problem of plenty ."
Want in the Midst o f Plenty
On the foundation of a fertile land and the world's most ad-
vanced technology the United States has erected an economy
capable of providing abundantly for every American (and of
eliminating hunger and suffering for many of the world's people) .
Due in part to a variety of geographic and historic factors, such
as a vast territory and an expanding frontier, American workers
have been able to win a wage standard surpassing that of any
other capitalist country.
Also important is the fact that U.S. industrial progress has never
been blocked by war; instead, capitalism here has thrived on wars
fought abroad. And not least important have been the militant,
12
14. tenacious, often bloody strikes and other struggles of the American
working class.
But this history has also been marked by long-standing mass
poverty in city slums and boss-ruled company towns. It has been
marked by even more grinding poverty in the countryside, mosI
notoriously among southern black and white sharecroppers and
tenant farmers. It has been punctuated by periodic depressions
when factories and mills were shut down and millions were thrown
out of work Why? Because we had produced "too much."
Today, we are assured, a "new era" has arrived . We have
mastered the secret of regulating the economy, we are told, and
can now eliminate depressions and unemployment. Permanent
prosperity is at hand.
But all is not so rosy as the prophets of plenty paint it. Since
World War I there has never been full employment except in
periods of all-out war, and even then only with a large part of
the work force in uniform . And the economy has been plagued by
repeated recessions, each with its upsurge of joblessness .
Young people face diminishing prospects of employment . In-
creasingly, older workers find themselves cast on the scrap heap
years before they are eligible for pensions. Among Black, Puerto
Rican, Mexican-American and Indian workers, levels of unem-
ployment often compare with those of deep depression years .
In the midst of "affluence" the government has been compelled
to recognize the existence of mass poverty. Even by its conserva-
tive yardsticks, nearly one individual in seven is poverty-stricken,
and nearly twice that number live at a level below adequacy .
Spread across the land are the blighted regions-the Appalachias .
In the ghettos, grinding poverty is the lot of the majority . Agri-
cultural workers, and especially migratory workers, live in terrible
want. Large numbers of women supporting children are. doomed to
dependence on relief. On Indian reservations poverty defies de-
scription.
The basic source of this poverty is capitalist exploitation . The
poor are the most exploited, the lowest paid workers, and victims
of chronic unemployment. Added to the exploitation of workers
generally is the super-exploitation of Black, Puerto Rican, Mexican-
13
15. American and Indian workers, based on a system of brutal national
oppression. These get the lowest-paid jobs .
The vaunted regulation of the economy consists mainly of ever
more stimulation through military spending-by 1969 more than
$100 billion a year., This "regulation" imposes a crushing burden
of taxes and inflation, and above all an ever-present danger of mass
annihilation in nuclear war.
In addition, billions are squandered on useless chrome plate,
built-in obsolescence, gimmicks and gadgets, and on a rising flood
of advertising .
But even all this fails securely to stabilize the economy . Re-
current post-war recessions and monetary crises show that the
threat of economic crisis has not been banished . Fear of a major
depression persists .
Why Socialism
The system of private ownership of the means of production and
their use for private profit become more and more a block to
economic and social progress. The vast potentials of the new
technological revolution are not realized, because its fruits are
appropriated by the capitalists. Instead of being eliminated, poverty
and unemployment grow. The only real remedy lies in abolishing
private ownership of the mines, mills and factories . The workers
themselves must become the owners of the means of production .
But since production is socialized, that is, since means of production
can only be operated jointly by large masses of workers, it fol-
lows that ownership by them can only take the form of collective,
not individual ownership. Capitalism must be replaced by social-
ism.
In a socialist society, production will be motivated not by the
profit of capitalists but by the needs of the people . Exploitation and
oppression of man by man will be ended.
It is the working class, therefore, which is the motive force for
socialism. It is the revolutionary class in our society. For it cannot
free itself of exploitation without ending the capitalist system,
without becoming, as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist
14
16. Manifesto, the "gravediggers of capitalism ." The workers, with
such allies as the small farmers, urban middle strata, intellectuals
and the specially oppressed minorities the Afro-Americans, Chi-
canos, Puerto Ricans and Indians-are the forces for the socialist
revolution in our land.
The Reign of Monopoly
Contrary to the brave adventure in glorious technicolor that
is found in history textbooks, American capitalist development is
a story of conquest, murder, plunder, corruption and ruthlessness.
It is a story of genocidal wars against the Indians and seizure of
their lands, of more than two centuries of slave trade and chattel
slavery followed by new forms of cruel oppression of the Black
people. It is a story of the war for plunder against Mexico and the
annexation of more than half its territory . It is a story of the rape
of Puerto Rico, of -the Phillipines and-up to 1959-of Cuba. It is
a story of the looting of the public treasury and the pillage of the
public domain that opened the West to railroad corporations,
mining combines and lumber barons. Out of such sordid exploits
came the accumulations of capital which led to the power and
wealth of American capitalism.
In the ruthless capitalist competition for the market, many small
capitalists were crushed or swallowed up by ever fewer and bigger
capitalists. The individual capitalist gave way to the corporation,
and the process culminated in the emergence of monopoly-of the
control of production and the market by a few giant corporations
in each major branch of industry. Competitive capitalism gave way
to a new stage: monopoly capitalism.
At the apex of our U .S. society today is the power of monopoly
capital. In the auto industry, three firms account for nearly the
entire output in the United States . Two corporations dominate the
electrical industry. In the aluminum industry, three firms control
almost all production. And so it is in other industries . These giants
are the chief of the 500 corporations which dominate the economy.
These 500 corporations, in turn, fall into domains controlled by
a handful of financial groups . The most powerful of these bear
15
17. well-known family names of high finance-Morgan, Rockefeller,
duPont, Mellon. The Rockefeller family alone owns, controls or
decisively influences an empire including such giants as Standard
Oil, the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company, and Westinghouse Electric-an empire whose total worth
is estimated at more than $63 billion.
Today the monopolization of the economy proceeds faster than
ever in an unprecedented wave of mergers and the mushrooming
of conglomerate corporations . In these, collections of enterprises
in the most diverse and unrelated fields are tied together in order
to grind out ever greater profits.
Monopoly Against the People
Monopoly capital not only exploits wage labor, it also extracts
tribute from the rest of the nation . It employs its dominant posi-'
tion in the market place and in the financial system to rig prices
and taxes and to manipulate credit. It uses the machinery of gov-
ernmentnment at all levels to fill its coffers .
Monopoly fosters and perpetuates racism, segregation and dis-
crimination so that it can subject Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano
and Indian workers to the cruelest super-exploitation . From the
earliest beginnings the object of Black oppression in this country
has been super-exploitation of Black labor, first as slave, later
as sharecropper and now as wage labor. For giant corporations
this super-exploitation means ten of billions in extra profits, ex-
tracted directly at the place of production through employment
at the worst jobs, under the worst working conditions and at the
lowest wages, and in the community through extortionate rents
and prices and outrageous interest charges .
In all these ways big business is the principal exploiter and op-
pressor of the Black people. The "power structure" of which Afro-
American freedom activists speak is a structure commanded by
monopoly capital.
Monopoly casts its shadow over the future of the younger gen-
eration. Reduction of jobs through automation dooms a growing
part of working-class youth to continued unemployment. Those
16
18. who acquire higher education or technical skills increasingly face
the prospect of becoming cogs in an automated productive ma-
chinery.
Monopoly is the principal blight of the nation's farms. To the
traditional squeeze by processors, suppliers, bankers, and railroads,
has been added domination by giant corporations moving into ag-
riculture with millions in capital to set up "factories in the field"
and engage in "agribusiness ." Farmers, especially small farmers,
are being ruined or converted into laborers for agribusiness more
rapidly than ever.
Monopoly exacts its toll from smell business and even from the
larger non-monopoly capitalists. Using its superior economic re-
sources in ruthless competition, employing its control over credits
and prices, obtaining favors from government at the expense of
small business, monopoly capital drives thousands of small and
not-so-small businesses to bankruptcy and menaces the existence
of others.
Monopoly defiles the professions and the intellectual pursuits,
reducing the skills of the healer and the talents of the artist to
just so many commodities for sale, each with its price tag . It ex-
tends standardization to the arts and professions, imposing crass
commercialism and deadening uniformity.
The power of big business aggravates every social problem, es-
calates every evil of capitalist society .
Urban blight, air and water pollution and lack of decent housing
are becoming more acute because it is more profitable for the
big corporations to keep it that way. The nation's health suffers
because medicine is dominated by a few giant insurance com-
panies and chemical-drug combines which resist any threat to their
power to extract profit from the needs of the ailing, the infirm, the
dying.
Controlling the mass media of information, culture and enter-
tainment, big business turns these into channels of profit and in-
struments of class rule . Intellectual, moral and cultural values are
corrupted to serve the greed of monopoly capitalism . The growth
of organized crime of every kind, the spread of police and po-
litical corruption-these, too, are products of the rule of big busi-
17
19. mess.
Everywhere monopoly capital puts profit above human life .
Everywhere its selfish ingest conf icts with the public good.
Everywhere, therefore, any effort for social progress and human
welfare meets the formidable barrier of monopoly .
Thus, in its most elementary self-interest, the vast majority of
the nation is pitted against the power of monoply capital .
Monopoly and Government:
The Rise of State Monopoly Capitalism
In this struggle the people encounter not only the economic
might of monopoly capital, but its political power which controls
the machinery of government and the two-party electoral ap-
paratus.
Concentration of economic power breeds concentration of po-
litical power. "Among us today," warned Franklin D . Roosevelt, "a
concentration of private power without equal in history is grow-
ing . . . If there is danger (to our liberties] it comes from the
concentrated power which is struggling so hard to master our
democratic government."
As monopoly capital has grown, its grip on the state machinery
has tightened and extended. The government has virtually become
the political instrument of the small group of top monopolists to
control the rest of society.
Since the days of the Great Depression, big business has in-
creasingly used the economic power and resources of the govern-
ment to bolster its profits and strengthen the dominance of U .S.
corporate power at home and abroad. In ever more intimate union
of economic and political power, corporation executives have
swarmed into decisive agencies in Washington and into key cabi-
net posts to make government more serviceable to the monopolies .
Increasingly, monopoly uses the state to provide markets, capital
and subsidies, . to guarantee foreign markets and investments, to
provide shock absorbers against losses in depression. Even the
largest corporations can no longer finance research development
and investments on the scale required for the most advanced in-
18
20. dustries. They arrange government financing in mixed government-
private operations from which they get the profits .. They look es-
pecially to cold-war and hot-war operations, which involve the
most enormous expenditures, the very largest profits, and the most
intimate merging of big business and big government .
American monopoly capitalism has grown into state monopoly
capitalism. Its most sinister offspring is the military-industrial com-
plex, a combination of those sectors of monopoly with the biggest
stake in militarism and foreign conquest and the military brass .
The power and privilege of the military-industrial complex grow
in proportion to the size of the military establishment it commands .
Corporation officers step from executive suites into Pentagon
command posts. Generals and admirals step from military com-
mand posts into lucrative positions as top corporation executives .
Through these and similar revolving doors there is a constant inter-
change between policy-making agencies of government and cor-
porate board rooms . In this "power elite" of corporation officers,
military commanders and political administrators, it is the corpora-
tion men who dominate and monopoly capital that determines
policy. Indeed, the basic aim and the net result of the whole
corporate-political-military combine is ever greater profits for the
big corporations.
The operations of the military-industrial complex involve a net-
work of secret, cons iratori _government agencies under their
direct contro An unholy combination exists o e en T-Iin=
to ' ence A en and the domestic and foreign ventures o Te
Bureau, of Investigation, especially in Latin America . Added
to this ' are many operations of the Pentagon and the State De-
partment, and numerous select White House committees . All these
form an "invisible government" exempt fiont public scrutiny but
controlled by monopoly, whose men are on the inside. Increasingly,
life-and-death decisions are made within this "invisible govern-
ment" where the Wall Street-Pentagon axis rules .
The growing power of the military-industrial complex extends
to many spheres of American society . It commands the economic
life of whole cities and regions . Key branches of industry are now
dependent on military procurement. In these the military-industrial
19
21. complex has a decisive voice in collective bargaining and the free-
dom of workers to strike. It intervenes in intellectual and academic
life through research grants, "think tank" projects and selective
subsidies to universities . Propaganda detachments of the Pentagon
and public relations departments of armaments industries employ
innumerable devices, from planted comic strips to supposedly
scholarly works, to shape public opinion.
The growth of militarism in the heart of our U .S. state monopoly
capitalism gives special irony to the propaganda of its apologists,
who praise it as the "new capitalism" with all the fervor of a TV
commercial. Today, we are told, the welfare state" has been
achieved. A benevolent government looks impartially after the eoo-
nomic and social welfare of all. Government regulation of the
economy maintains continuous prosperity and growing affluence
for everyone.
What has already been said concerning unemployment and
poverty, economic insecurity and fear of recession, is enough to
expose the utter falsity of such propaganda . Moreover, compared
with the enormous flow of government funds to the monopoly
corporations, the highly publicized welfare expenditures are a
piddling trickle . And even the existing welfare measures, meager
as they are, were not freely given . They were won only through
stubborn struggle by the people and must be constantly defended
against efforts to wipe them out in the -name of "economy," bal-
ancing--the budget, and cold-war or hot-war emergencies .
Meanwhile, government generosity to the monopolies grows
ever more lavish. Government, which now spends some $250 bil-
lion a year at all levels, has been 'shaped - into 'a huge "funnel
through which billions of dollars taken in taxes from the entire
nation are poured into the coffers of giant corporations .
For all this, and most especially for the astronomic armaments
expenditures so profitable to big business, working people pay in
higher taxes and prices. They pay in the mounting deficit of neces-
sary public services-education, health, transit, recreation-and in
the choking off of social welfare expenditures . Government has be-
come an economic agency for taking from the poor to give to the
rich. This is the real nature of state monopoly capitalism .
20
22. To sum up: the exploitation of wage labor by capital leads to
a struggle by the working class whose final goal is to abolish ex-
ploitation of man by man by establishing socialism . To the ex-
ploitation of wage labor, monopoly and state monopoly capitalism
add the exploitation and oppression of other sections of the people,
leading to a many-sided struggle against all forms of robbery com-
mitted by monopoly capital. This is a struggle whose immediate
purpose is not socialism but restriction of the power of the mo-
nopolies through controls by people's organizations and by poli-
tical power in the people's hands . At its heart is the struggle to
win control of the government and to use it for the benefit of the
people, not the big corporations . This takes place within the frame-
work of a great diversity of struggles against monopoly domination .
These diverse democratic struggles, alongside of and intertwined
with the class struggle, are objectively struggles against a common
enemy: monopoly capital. Hence, as awareness of this grows, they
tend to merge into a common stream of struggle-into a coalition of
all democratic forces against the power of monopoly . The strategy
and tactics of the fight for socialism is closely intertwined with the
anti-monopoly struggle.
U.S. Imperialism
To most Americans "imperialism" conjures up an image of em-
pires based on colonial possessions. Modern imperialism is ..more
complex. V. I. Lenin, foremost Communist leader and thinker- of
this century, defined it as the monopoly stage of capitalism . This
stage is characterized not only by the dominance of monopoly and
control of the economy by a handful of financial empires. It is char-
acterized also by the accumulation in the hands of the monopolies
of huge piles of surplus capital, which they invest abroad to gain
control of sources of raw materials and to extract superprofits by
exploiting extremely low-paid workers in other countries . This ex-
port of capital assumes dominance over the export of goods. In
this lies the essence of modern imperialism . By these standards the
United States is not only imperialist, it is the most powerful im-
perialism in the world today.
21
23. To make foreign investments and superprofits secure, it is neces-
sary to dominate other countries . In the past such domination as-
sumed crass colonial forms. In our age, it assumes more typically
the form of neo-colonialism-a form at which U .S. imperialism is
especially adept because of its experience in Latin America . Most
Latin American countries have long had nominal political inde-
pendence. But through economic penetration, military intervention,
diplomatic intrigue and cloak-and-dagger conspiracy, U .S. mo-
nopoly has gained overwhelming economic and political control
in those countries . It exercises similar control over the Philippines .
Since World War II, U.S. imperialism has extended that pattern
throughout the free" world. Private U.S. assets in other countries
rose from $12 billion in 1940 to $100 billion in 1968 . These invest-
ments penetrate not only underdeveloped regions but advanced
capitalist countries such as Canada, Japan and the Western Euro-
pean nations, which feel the grip of the dollar . These investments
are protected by a global network of some 3,000 military bases, of
diplomatic outposts, conspiratorial centers of the Central Intel-
ligence Agency and a retinue of puppet regimes . They are de-
fended by every type of aggressive action, including the threat of
nuclear war. From this empire enormous profits are extracted by un-
equal terms of trade, superexploitation of labor and monopolization
of raw materials sources . Today nearly one-fourth of all corporate
profits-and among the biggest corporations, one-third-come from
abroad. While the main form of U.S. imperialist domination is neo-
colonialism, the U.S. continues to hold a number of outright colonies :
Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and others .
It makes of Hawaii a military outpost and plunders the resources
of Alaska, using the device of incorporating these territories into
the U.S. as states .. It also holds unofficial protectorates such as
Taiwan, Okinawa, South Korea and, for the time being, the main
cities of South Vietnam.
The Crisis of U.S. Society
Areas of Crisis
There is growing uneasiness in America, a rising spirit of revolt.
22
24. There is crisis and talk of crisis. Crisis in the ghettos . . . in the
cities . . . on the farms . . . in the pollution of our environment
. . . in education . . . in morality. All these seemingly separate
crises are in reality s~' of a deepgoing crisis in American society .
that is most acute in five major areas :
Unparalleled massive opposition and militant resistance in
every section of the people to the immoral, unjust, colonial and
racist war in Vietnam increasingly challenges the fundamental as-
sumptions, motives and goals of official foreign policy. It increas-
ingly becomes opposition to militarism and imperialism as a whole.
2. The flames of ghetto explosions show that misery, inequality
and indignity have become unbearable to the great mass of Black
Americans. They illuminate their determination to secure now a
radical improvement in their economic status and respect for their
human dignity as a people.
3. Unrest in labor's ranks is fanned by the revolution in tech-
nology that spreads insecurity among workers. Adding to chronic
problems of unemployment and Poverty, automation and cyber-
na on pose an economic challenge a new order. Then there is
the economic burden of war, paid in risin rim, rise and
falling living standards.
4. Rebellion among youth Challenges the pretense and perform-
ance of capitalist society. It demands realization of democracy,
freedom, equality, peace and morality. It insists on realization of
the potential of abundance and human creativity brought within
reach by modem science and technology . .
5. Prominent on our national scene is the risin$ tide of struggle
against political repression . To counter popular discontent, an ugly
trend is growing toward suppression of dissent and resistance,
toward regimentation and enforced conformity toward creation of
a "silenced majority." The trend is shown in the enormous mili-
tarization of American life, and in the growth and operation of
such political police forces as the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and the Central Intelligence Agency. It is own m increasing use
of combat-armed police, and even military units, to "pacify" ghettos,
to shoot or club down protest demonstrators. It is shown in reaction-
ary legislation and prosecution of dissenters. It is shown in the
23
25. growing resort to political murder and assassination. Its most ex-
treme manifestation is an aggressive, well-organized, well-heeled,
politically skilled ultra-Right. This ultra-Right, whose views find in-
creasing expression in the government, embracing the most rabid
advocates of racism and fascism, today constitutes a grave menace
to democratic liberties in our country . This menace the people of
our country resist with mounting vigor .
The Nature of the Crisis
The crisis which permeates our society today, of which these
crisis areas are symptoms, is the sickness of a society in decay,
not only in our country but wherever capitalism reigns .
Beginning with World War I, world capitalism entered a state
of general, chronic crisis as a social system . It was then that the
contradictions and conflicts within the system reached the point of
explosion, visiting the first global war upon mankind . That war
triggered a revolutionary wave whose great historic achievement
was the socialist revolution of October 1917 in thh old Russian
Empire. This freed mankind on one-sixth of the earth from capi-
talism. Since then, capitalism has given rise to almost incessant
wars in one part of the world or another. In the thirties the capi-
talist world was plunged into the most devastating economic crisis
in history.
Monopoly capitalism turned to fascism to quell the opposition
of the people to its program of war and privation . It resorted to
fascism to deprive the people of the democratic rights they had
won through decades of struggle . In all capitalist countries fascist
tendencies emerged. In Hitler Germany and the other Axis powers
the fascists took over and unleashed World War II. Monopoly
capitalism nurtures fascist tendencies and movements in the U .S.
today as storm-trooper reserves against the people .
At the same time, capitalism has suffered as a result of revolu-
tionary victories of socialism that have wrested more than one-
third of mankind from capitalism's grasp . And national liberation
struggles are shattering the system of colonialism .
All these phenomena both reflect and accentuate the general
24
26. crisis of capitalism. They show that this crisis cannot be resolved
without abolishing capitalism. Specific crisis situations (for ex-
ample, a given economic recession or a crisis arising from a par-
ticular military adventure) may be resolved or alleviated within
the framework of capitalism. We Communists make common cause
with all who fight for such objectives. At the same time we realize
that the deepening general crisis of capitalism tends to aggravate
specific crisis symptoms and to cause them to recur in more acute
form. Fundamental, durable solutions of the major crisis problems
of our people can be achieved only through a fundamental-that
is, revolutionary-transformation of our society .
The heart of our program lies in defining the connection be-
tween what is necessary today in the people's struggles for their
immediate needs and the ultimate necessity to replace this society
with a rational, humane and just social order .
A majority of our people have been impelled by specific crisis
problems into varied forms of struggle . Many have become per-
suaded that only radical solutions can begin to cope with problems
of such magnitude. Growing numbers are coming to recognize
that the crisis problems are not just defects of our social system,
but are built-in consequences of its innermost workings . They are
coming to realize that what they face is not simply a crisis in one
or another area of national life, but an, organic crisis of an outdated
social system that is oppressive, corrupt, exploiting, dehumanizing
and irrational . They are concluding, therefore, that it is necessary
to change the system, that it cannot be patched up and made to
work.
This Leftward-moving wave of struggle, in our country and in
others, reflects a dramatic turning point in world history, one which
heralds a new wave of advance by the forces of progress.
25
27. II. THE WORLD SETTING
The World Balance of Forces
We live in a revolutionary age that in scope and depth eclipses
all prior periods of social upheaval and change. The great revolu-
tions of the 18th and 19th centuries, including the American and
French, directly involved but a small portion of mankind in Eu-
rope and the Americas . Today's revolutionary tide extends to all
continents, to the most remote regions. Those former revolutions
swept away absolute monarchy, feudalism and primitive colonial-
ism in a few spots on the globe. Today's revolutions challenge the
reign of imperialism and capitalism everywhere . Today's revolu-
tions mark mankind's historic transition from capitalism to so-
cialism.
The transition from feudalism to capitalism spanned centuries.
The hallmark of our age is the swift spread of socialism from its
birth in Russia in 1917 to a world-wide system of states embracing
one-third of mankind. It is an age that will culminate in the .tri-
umph of socialism throughout the world.
Although this final destination is still to be reached, the world
has now passed through a most significant waypoint . The balance
of strength between the ascendant forces of socialism and anti-
colonialist revolution and the declining forces of capitalism and
colonialism has shifted irrevocably in favor of the former .
This historic shift, which first became evident in the middle and
late 50's is the result, in the first place, of the defeat of the fascist
powers in World War II . In this defeat monopoly capitalism, which
has nurtured fascism, suffered a blow of world significance. Sub-
sequent developments which contributed to the shift include :
1. The phenomenal recovery of the USSR from the devastation
of World War II and its launching out on the road to communism.
2. The consolidation of socialist development and the defeat of
counter-revolutionary attempts in the newly established socialist
26
28. countries of Eastern Europe-Czechoslovakia, the German Demo-
cratic Republic, Poland, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia
and Albania.
3. The defeat of U.S. aggression against the Democratic. People's
Republic of Korea and of British, French and Israeli aggression
against Egypt
4. The growth of the military and scientific might of the socialist
countries including the smashing of the U.S. atom bomb monopoly
by the Soviet Union; the emergence of the world peace movement
and the rise of the national liberation movement . These have
thwarted the unleashing of nuclear war by U .S. imperialism.
5. The Chinese revolution, the liberation of a large number of
colonial countries and the heavy blows inflicted on the system of
colonialism, with a number of liberated countries taking a social-
ist orientation.
6. The upsurge of strikes and democratic struggles in the capi-
talist countries coupled with a rise in organization and class con-
sciousness of the working class and with the g rowing strength of
Communist parties, particularly in France and Italy .
7. Growing economic instability in the capitalist world and the
sharpening of interimperialist conflicts and rivalries .
World socialism first presented its challenge to world capitalism
in the years following World War I. In the crisis of the thirties
the world saw in the rise of the socialist Soviet Union that a differ-
ent and better way of life was possible. The Soviet role in World
War II demonstrated that the change was irreversible . The social-
ist system of production, free of unemploymentt and crises, the
breaking of the U.S. atom monopoly, the first Sputnik-all these
represented new challenges to U .S. capitalism.
The Cuban revolution, which established the first socialist state
in the Western Hemisphere, marked a defeat of continental dimen-
sions for U.S. imperialism. Its growing successes, despite attempted
invasion and the U.S. embargo, have deepened the defeat. They
foreshadow the course of liberation for all of Latin America .
The world relationship of forces is not something mechanical
or static. It is a relationship between forces engaged in the most
intense conflict, global in scope. In such a conflict ebbs and flows
27
29. are inevitable. Errors, miscalculations or divisions in the revolu-
tionary camp can and do lead to costly reverses . At selected focal
points imperialism can momentarily concentrate an overwhelming
superiority of power.
In a number of countries where the issue had been in the bal-
ance, the forces of imperialism have succeeded for the time being
in regaining the upper hand, imposing reactionary, fascist regimes .
The socialist and anti-imperialist forces are momentarily suffering
also from disunity within the world Communist movement, par-
ticularly that which has resulted from departure from Marxist-
Leninist principles by Mao Tse-tung and his supporters in the lead-
ership of the Communist Party of China.
The process remains a zigzag one. But it takes place in a histori-
cal situation in which the forces opposing .imperialism, led by the
working class with its command of state power in vast sections of
the globe and its powerful revolutionary movements elsewhere,
have already acquired the strength that enables them increasingly
to exert the decisive influence on the course of human events . This
is the paramount fact which places its indelible stamp on our time .
In some imperialist countries, and even among some sectors of
American monopoly capital, there is a tendency to seek adjust-
ment to the new world of reality . But the response of the dominant
sections of U.S. imperialism has been to attempt to turn back the
revolutionary tide, to reverse the unfavorable balance of, forces .
This has led to an acute intensification of world tensions and con-
flicts, highlighted by increasing resort of U .S. imperialism to mili-
tary aggression. This aggression is the major threat to freedom of
the peoples and the peace of the world. Resistance to it has thus
become the focal point of struggles on a world scale and within
the U.S.
In this conflict it is important to distinguish between the basic
nature of imperialism which cannot be altered short of its destruc-
tion, and what imperialism does in a particular setting, which can
be changed. Thus, although the essential nature of British and
French imperialism has not changed, both have been compelled
to retreat and increasingly to abandon their efforts to retain their
colonial empires by military force.
28
30. To be sure, U.S. imperialism possesses immeasurably greater
power and it is not in the same situation as these rivals . But U.S.
imperialism can also be compelled to retreat. True, a much more
powerful array of forces is required to compel such change . But
such an array of forces exists . It includes the powerful socialist
camp, the anti-colonial forces, the world ' working-class movement
and the peoples everywhere struggling for peace and freedom .
It includes the majority of our people actively opposing the war
in Vietnam and other aspects of U .S. imperialist policy. The power
is there; its effective exercise depends upon the unity and militancy
of these forces and the level of the struggle they wage .
These are the hard realities with which U .S. official policy
clashes.
The "American Century" - A Vain Dream
The main thrust of the policy of world domination took shape
in the immediate aftermath of World War II . The U.S. then seemed
militarily and economically supreme. It was a pillar of reactionary
political stability in a world of unrest and upheavals. America's
rulers saw in this the opportunity to dictate peace terms . They
took over Hitler's dream of reigning over the globe. They en-
visioned an "American Century" in which American troops and
bases would dominate vassal states. They saw an era in which
American monopolies would extract profits from the world's peoples.
Therefore, they launched the cold war, directed against all
revolutionary movements everywhere. Above all its target was the
Soviet Union, the most formidable obstacle to U .S. world domina-
tion as it had been the decisive obstacle to Hitlerite world domina-
tion.
Failure to achieve their grandiose ambition shows that even then
the U.S. rulers underrated the strength and recuperative powers
of socialism and the upsurge of colonial revolution. But whatever
the circumstances that made the "American Century" seem achiev-
able in 1946, they are now long gone . The atomic monopoly is
long ended. The relative U.S. weight in the global economic scales
has lessened with the recovery of its capitalist rivals and with
29
31. the enormous economic growth of the socialist camp.
All the positions of strength from which the cold war was
launched have been either seriously weakened or destroyed . How-
ever, U.S. monopoly, driven by its inner contradictions, persists in
waging the cold war. But its global aims collide with the greatest
revolutionary tide in history. Hence, U.S. imperialism is embarked
upon the most gigantic effort at counter-revolution in human annals .
When the most powerful, industrially advanced countries first
embarked upon empire-building, they did not doubt the stability
of colonialism as a system. A relatively small military commitment
-a few gunboats, several regiments-was enough to conquer an
economically backward territory and suppress rebellions of the
native population .
Today, to seize or try to hold a key point requires a colossal
expenditure of money and manpower, and even that is often in-
sufficient In our age colonialism itself is being torn apart. At-
tempting empire-building, U.S. monopoly faces the reality of
empire-crumbling. It faces the problem therefore, not only of
establishing spheres of empire, but of trying to save the very sys-
tem of imperialism . All its propaganda catchwords cannot conceal
that it acts to halt social change, to thwart the progress of civiliza-
tion. But U.S. imperialism cannot hope to achieve its designs of
empire. It is too late in history for that This is the age of anti-
imperialism.
To be sure, U.S. imperialism achieves some localized successes.
But the limitations imposed on it are graphically revealed at two
focal points: Cuba and Vietnam.
In eight years of effort U.S. imperialism has not been able to
crush the Cuban Revolution, this historic breach in U.S. monopoly
domination over what it regards as its private preserve, the West-
ern Hemisphere. Military invasion and threat of invasion, economic
boycott, subversion, intrigue-all were employed by the world's
most powerful imperialist state against a small island ninety miles
from its shores. But revolutionary Cuba endures as a beacon to
the oppressed and exploited of all Latin America .
Nothing demonstrates more dramatically than Vietnam how far
gone are the days of "gunboat diplomacy." Since 1965 a relatively
80
32. small country, with a largely peasant population and primitive in-
dustrial plant, has withstood and won major victories against ag-
gression by the world's foremost industrial state, possessing over-
whelming superiority in armaments. U.S. imperialism has displayed
fiendish skill in murdering people, but by the same token it has
exposed its inability to kill the will of a revolutionary people to
fight for independence and freedom as long as it has the oppor-
tunity and means to fight.
The gallant resistance of the Cuban and Vietnamese peoples
is rendered undefeatable by the solidarity of the socialist camp, by
the support of other peoples and not least of the American people
-in short, by the new balance of forces in the world. This only
underscores the growing gulf between U .S. monopoly's design to
reverse the world revolutionary process and its capacity to achieve
this reactionary aim.
The Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism
U.S. imperialism retains the capacity, however, to kill and maim
other peoples . It can still exact an ever heavier toll in blood and
treasure from the American people. It retains the capacity to un-
leash global nuclear war.
Struggle against U .S. imperialism is, therefore, literally a strug-
gle to save the nation-and the world-from catastrophe. One or an-
other aggressive thrust of U .S. imperialism can be checked by re-
sistance abroad and popular opposition at home. Checked at one
point, it will attempt to expand at another . Thus, we foresee a
stubborn, many-sided conflict with U .S. imperialism. But it is not
an endless, unchanging struggle . Each setback for U.S. imperialism
weakens its position and strengthens the forces opposing it. It is
possible therefore, to create a preponderance of anti-imperialist
strength that will curb the aggressive drive of U .S. imperialism and
reduce its political power at all levels . For the American people,
of course, the final aim is to end imperialism and war by destroy-
ing U.S. monopoly capitalism and replacing it with a new social
system.
In the struggle against imperialism an important factor is divi-
31
33. sions within the ranks of monopoly itself . These express themselves
mostly as limited tactical differences in particular situations . But
even these, in moments of crisis can be a factor in averting ultimate
catastrophe, thereby providing opportunity and time in the strug-
gle for more basic change.
When the MacArthur plan for bombing China and employing
nuclear weapons was rejected in the Korean War, the outbreak
4 World War III was averted and preconditions were created
for a negotiated truce in that conflict. When the Pentagon-CIA pro-
posal to bomb Cuba was rejected during the missile crisis of
October 1962, mankind was again pulled back from the abyss of
World War III, Cuban socialism was saved and the possibility was
preserved for peaceful resolution of that crisis . But Guantanamo re-
mains as a festering sore of imperialist aggression .
Such divisions do not in themselves contain the promise of pro-
gressive solutions. Only popular struggles contain such promise .
But any serious strategy of. struggle must take into account the
divisions within the enemy camp and take every possible ad-
vantage of them.
The peoples abroad fighting for independence are natural allies
of all within the U.S. fighting the same enemy. It is the duty of all
who fight monopoly capital in this country to support their strug-
gles. Their struggles and ours reinforce one another . Both rein-
force the struggle for world peace. Millions of our people have
come to realize that this is the significance of the struggle to end
the war in Vietnam. So,`Eoo, the active support of the Cuban revo-
lution and of the liberation struggles of all the peoples of Latin
America in opposition to Wall Street imperialism are in the best
interests of the people of the United States .
In particular, the Communist Party upholds the cause of the
independence of Puerto Rico. Real independence means more than
full sovereignty and removal of occupying forces and officials, basic
as these are. Indemnities must be paid for the billions in super-
profits taken from Puerto Rico over the past seventy years. Existing
travel and trade privileges in the United States must be left intact.
All restrictions on Puerto Rican relations with other countries
must be abolished.
32
34. "Anti-Communism" and Chauvinism -
Designs For Catastrophe
To camouflage its aggressive aims, to provide an ideological
cloak for its brazen assaults on the independence of peoples, U .S.
imperialism employs the device of "anti-Communism." This serves
at home to create confusion, divisions among the people and
suppression, and abroad it gives the gloss of a holy crusade to a
rank policy of conquest.
"Anti-Communism" means not genuine criticism but a carica-
ture of Communism. The ideology of "anti-Communism" is based
on lies. It ascribes to Communists aims and methods which bear
no relation to reality. It tries to incite hatred of Communism . It
brands as "Communist" all who stand in the way of aggressive
imperialism. It seeks to justify any repression, any cruelty-even -
genocide-in the name of "fighting Communism."
It was Adolph Hitler who carried "anti-Communism" to its most
fanatical extreme. The lesson of Hitlerism must never be forgotten .
To be sure, Hitler hated Communism, an enmity of which we
Communists are proud. But in the interests of the German mo-
nopolies, under the cloak of "anti-Communism" he crushed trade
unions and democracy in Germany, conquered Western Europe,
blitzed Britain, and aimed to establish global domination . U.S.
monopoly capital similarly hates Communism and this, too, is an
enmity of which we Communists are proud . But just as surely
this "anti-Communism" serves U .S. monopoly's designs for re-
action at home, its drive for neo-colonial conquest, its drive for
world domination.
Employment of anti-Communism" to justify the brass knuckles
of imperialist conquest is nowhere more brazen than in Latin
America. An official doctrine of preventive counter-revolution has
been proclaimed, whereby U.S. corporate-political power arrogates
to itself the "right" to crush any revolution in the hemisphere with
bomb, bayonet and gun on the grounds that it might turn "Com-
munist."
The U.S. government has added to this modernized Monroe Doc-
trine a Pacific Doctrine for Asia and an Atlantic policy for Europe .
33
35. U.S. imperialism claims the "right" to crush revolution and con-
quer everywhere under the slogan of anti-Communism, and for
that purpose has put together aggressive military alliances such as
NATO and SEATO.
just as Hitler's "anti-Communism" ultimately led the German
nation itself to catastrophe, so the ultimate victim of the "anti-
Communism" of U .S. imperialism must, if it is not checked, be
the people of the United States and the people of the world.
Certainly "anti-Communism" has failed to halt the revolution-
ary process. This process is irreversible because it is propelled by
the growing awareness among the world's peoples that funda-
mental social and political change is necessary for a . better life.
The impulse to revolution in these lands is strengthened as the
gulf between their destitution and the relative affluence of the ad-
vanced capitalist countries which loot them grows ever wider . To
them "anti-Communism" is indeed a hollow argument against
revolution.
Coupled with "anti-Communism" is the resort to national chauvin-
ism and racism as ideological cloaks for division and conquest
In the U.S. the predominant form of national chauvinism is white
chauvinism. Racism is fostered to maintain and aggravate disunity
between white and black Americans . National chauvinism is en-
couraged to justify the depredations of U .S. imperialism in other
parts of the world, such as the aggression in Korea and Vietnam,
the intervention in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and the
Congo, and the fostering of animosity to the Arab peoples .
Under Hitler fascism, national chauvinism and racism ended in
the genocidal slaughter of ten million beings . But Germans-
German workers and German Jews-were Hitler's first victims . The
lesson of Hitlerism is that, at the bitter end, the American people
themselves would become the victims of the chauvinistic pestilence.
The Revolutionary Process
Contemporary revolutions bear two distinctive marks : they, are
socialist, they are anti-imperialist . More than a billion human
34
36. beings have embarked on socialist revolution. Untold millions
more in the capitalist countries are striving to achieve that goal.
A billion more are in various stages of revolution for national
liberation. Nor is it a matter of numbers alone. In socialist lands
there is enormous growth of strength, economic and military, fed
by spectacular advances in science, technology and education,
nourished by the optimism and unity of peoples joined in the re-
warding labor of social progress . And even in those newly liber-
ated colonial lands which have not yet taken the socialist path
there is a new pride of sovereign nationhood, a new resolve to
overcome economic and social backwardness and other legacies
of colonialism.
The anti-colonial revolutions aim to destroy imperialist domina-
tion, feudal bondage and political tyranny. In the struggle for such
aims a broad national unity is attainable, including workers,
peasants, intellectuals, middle classes, apd even some capitalists
restricted by foreign monopoly . The attainment of such aims, pro-
gressive and liberating as they are, His not yet the attainment of
socialism. However, socialist and anti-colonial revolutions are close-
ly linked.
1. Imperialism is the common enemy of both.
2. Anti-colonial revolutions are aided by the revolutionary ex-
ample of the socialist world and Wits economic, diplomatic, and
#iilktary assistance.
3.. Striving to leap from economic backwardness and extreme
ooverey t+p modern industry and abundance, colonial peoples are
increasingly impelled to bypass capitalist economic forms, which
retard' their growth and subject them to imperialist penetration .
Workers and peasants, who suffer most acutely from the legacies
of colonialism, are therefore impelled to make the advance from
anti-colonial revolution to socialist revolution . This brings them
into sharpest conflict with neo-colonialism and with those social
strata which derive wealth and privilege from a private profit sys-
tem.
Thus, the two kinds of revolution typical of our age-socialist
and anti-colonial-are distinct yet interconnected parts of one revo-
lutionary process. Each reinforces the other.
35
37. The revolutionary process takes a wide variety of forms, arising
from the specific conditions of each revolution. One may learn
from many revolutions, but one cannot take any single revolution
as a model to copy . Whatever influence may be exerted by the ex-
ample and experience of others, each revolution arises from the
problems, social conflicts and class relationships in its own coun-
try. There can be no import or export of revolution.
The Fight For Peace
U.S. monopoly capital, however, seeks to export counter-revo-
lution. The U.S. thus becomes the alien intruder, violating the
right to self-determination, employing military force when other
means fail to secure its domination. Social revolution thus becomes
joined with the struggle for national independence . More, revo-
lution becomes joined with the struggle for peace because it con-
fronts U.S. imperialist intervention, the primary source of war in
the world today.
The struggle for peace is, therefore, a struggle for the right of
all peoples to secure national independence, to make such revo-
lutionary change as they find necessary, free of military interven-
tion or aggression. It is a struggle to frustrate, rebuff and block
each threat' or act of aggression by U.S. imperialism. It is also a
struggle to prevent U .S. imperialism from plunging the world into
nuclear war. Each aggression by U .S. imperialism needs to be de-
feated and halted because it is in itself, as in Vietnam, immoral,
unjust, reactionary and barbarous . Each also needs to be halted
before it can erupt into thermonuclear war .
In the struggle for peace the central factor is the existence of
two rival social systems-socialism and capitalism . From its incep-
tion in one industrially backward, war-weakened country sur-
rounded by hostile and far more powerful capitalist states, social-
ism proclaimed a policy of peaceful co-existence and peaceful
competition between the two systems . Socialist society contains
no vested economic interests that profit from war, and hence no
economic compulsions to military conquest . On the contrary its
own internal development and political interests are best served
36
38. by peace. Lenin and other leaders of the fledgling socialist state
firmly believed that socialism would triumph throughout the world,
but not through aggressive employment of Soviet arms. Their be-
lief was based on their understanding of the contradictions within
capitalism, on their confidence that the working class in the capi-
talist countries would be impelled by historical necessity to lead
a victorious struggle for socialism . They were further persuaded
that Soviet economic and social progress, visibly demonstrating the
superiority of socialism as a social system, would exert the most,
revolutionizing effect upon the world's peoples .
Out of such fundamental considerations emerged the socialist
policy of striving to prevent a military clash between the two social
systems, of impressing upon the world's peoples that socialism
sought to wage the contest between the two systems through eco-
nomic, ideological and political means. The choice of means, how-
ever, was not socialism's alone. While advocating peaceful co-
existence, Lenin recognized that imperialism, in view of its su-
perior strength might well suceed in unleashing war upon the
world. This it did in World War II.
The new factor in our time is the emergence of socialism as a
world system in alliance with the vast national liberation revolu- .
tions and with far more advanced and powerful working-class
movements in the capitalist countries . This new constellation of
forces possesses the power to deny imperialism its former freedom
of action to determine the course of world events . This is the basis
for the new conclusion that prevention of a military showdown
between the two world systems-a showdown which almost in-
evitably would be a thermonuclear war-is now realizable .
But this objective can be realized only through the most resolute,
militant and united-struggle by the forces of peace and liberation
against the forces of imperialism and war.
The struggle for peace is inexorably intertwined with the revo-
lutionary process. To curb the aggressive drive of U.S. imperialism
is to create the most favorable conditions for the further develop-
ment of revolutionary change. And each revolutionary advance,
by weakening imperialism, reinforces the struggle for peace. In
the broad historical sweep, the struggle for peace is objectively
37
39. a struggle to facilitate the transition from capitalism to socialism
without the catastrophic devastation of nuclear war .
At this moment the global struggle between the forces of im-
perialism and war on one side and the forces of liberation and
peace on the other is centered on the bloody battlefronts of Viet-
nam. The supreme challenge now is to end U.S. aggression and to
bring our troops ground, air, naval home, so that the Vietnamese
people may freely decide their own destiny . As long as U.S. ag-
gression continues, not only the destiny of the Vietnamese people
but the fate of all peoples hangs in the balance. Renewed escala-
tion cannot achieve "victory"-but it can trigger World War III .
Vietnam is a bloody testimonial to the bestial crimes that U .S.
imperialism commits in its pursuit of counter-revolution and world
domination. It is the duty of Americans, in whose name these crimes
are committed, to end them and prevent their repetition elsewhere .
Vietnam has brought home to the people the need to rid our nation
of the shameful burden of aggression and militarism in order to
begin to deal with the social ills and injustices which beset our
people.
Beyond the fight against this particular war and other wars and
interventions, is the fight for disarmament, for prohibition and de-
struction of nuclear weapons, for removing forever the threat of
international genocide.
With the overwhelming majority of the world's peoples favoring
disarmament, with this cause 'inscribed in resolutions of the United
Nations, it is a goal which can be fought for with a 'realistic per-
spective of success. U.S. imperialism can be compelled to curb
drastically its escalating production of death-dealing weapons . It
can be compelled to allot much of the money now spent for this
purpose for badly needed public services and social welfare.
40. III. THE FORCES OF PROGRESS
The Spirit of Rebellion
Rising tensions and turbulent conflicts become ever more con-
spicuous landmarks on the American scene. The growing extortions
of the state-monopoly combination meet with a rising spirit of re-
bellion on all sides. And this spirit has been brought to a head by
aggression in Vietnam with its pervasive impact on American life .
The Vietnam war has greatly accelerated the trend toward mili-
tarization of the country. It has greatly expanded the power of the
military-industrial complex. It has accentuated. the deformation of
the nation's economy and the perversion of its political priorities .
Drift toward authoritarian rule, inherent in state monopoly
capitalism, becomes increasingly pronounced . Unprecedented and
unconstitutional concentration of powers in the hands of the presi-
dency, especially war-making powers, has taken place. The FBI
and CIA as instruments of the "invisible government" become ever
more brazen in their spying, bugging, infiltration, subversion and
instigation of dangerous military adventures . The Pentagon has
become an economic empire serving big business, with assets
totalling more than $160 billion-a mammoth pork barrel for bil-
lions in profits and corruption in high places .
For the first time in our history we have a permanent system
of conscription, violating all American tradition. Millions of young
Americans are subjected to systematic military indoctrination . A
powerful military caste has been created in the upper echelons
of the armed forces. Institutions of higher learning are being
turned into regimented adjuncts of the military-industrial complex .
There is growing resort to outright repression, to imprisonment
for war opponents and black militants, to increasing police vio-
lence and murder, and to plans for military occupation of the
ghettos. There is an ugly growth of racist, fascist incitement.
In the economic sphere the enormous demands of the war
machine come into ever sharper conflict with the essential needs
of the American people. Deficits in social welfare and public
39
41. services are increasing . The crisis of the cities deepens as does the
crisis in education, health and other social needs . Less and less
money is left to meet the demand of the people of the ghettos
and slums for radical improvement in their conditions . Family
incomes are eroded by rising prices and taxes to feed the war
machine. The right to strike for higher wages in the endless race
to catch up with soaring living costs is under attack. And hardest
hit by all this are the Black, Puerto Rican and Chicano workers.
The aggressive policies of U.S. monopoly capital lead in the
direction of more war, more militarization, more sacrifices for the
working people, more repression, more racism-in short, in the
direction of some form of fascist-military rule . But the oppressive,
warlike forces of monopoly are meeting with powerful forces op-
posing these trends-irrepressible movements of protest, resistance
and rebellion . Where the country will go will be decided by the
great battles and powerful movements only now unfolding.
In these, the growing involvement of the organized workers is
the sure guarantee of victory . A mighty peace movement has arisen,
the most powerful in the nation's history, embracing millions.
Growth in numbers has been accompanied by growth in aware-
ness that it is U.S. aggression which is responsible for the war in
Vietnam. Along with rising moral outrage there is growing recog-
nition that U .S. aggression is not an unfortunate "mistake" but
the consequence of an imperialist drive to dominate other peoples .
In the ghettos, unprecedented rebellions have been triggered by
anger at sops and broken promises, by frustration at the indiffer-
ence to the true magnitudes of the economic deprivation, human
indignity and murderous police repression to which the Black
people are subjected. Black Americans are fighting energetically
for control of schools and other public institutions in their com-
munities. There is mounting resistance to police brutality and other
forms of violence.
In labor's ranks rebellion is manifested in stubborn, - militant
strikes that defy government threats and pressures, and often over-
ride policies of conservative union officials . It is manifested in the
gathering challenge embracing a major section of the trade union
movement, to the pro-war line of the Meany officialdom .
40
42. In the younger generation rebellion is dramatized in the emerg-
ence of a powerful draft resistance movement. In growing numbers,
young men-supported by their elders-refuse to serve in an unjust,
immoral, unconstitutional, imperialist war . Resistance to the war
has spread within the armed forces.
Young workers are prominent in challenging the status quo in
the unions. They form the backbone of rank-and-file movements
and struggles. Masses of students are in revolt against the re-
actionary, racist character of our educational institutions .
In the intellectual and professional community, in religious
circles, there is a vigorous revival of social protest and commit-
ment after the long, shameful silence of the McCarthyite era . In-
spired by the example of Black militancy, and driven by their
own needs, the Chicano, Puerto Rican and Indian communities
assert their grievances and demands with greater boldness and
unity. In farm regions there are producers' strikes . In short, most
significant on the American scene are the new, dynamic elements,
the new forces of social change, of the great democratic upsurge .
Significant, too, is the growing process of radicalization among all
these sections of the people, the mounting development of po-
litical, class and social consciousness . Ever more widely, the existing
scale of values and priorities growing out of capitalist exploitation
and oppression, is being questioned and challenged .
Millions of our people seek radical alternatives to prevailing
programs and policies, radical alterations in the condition and
quality of the life they live. Smaller but growing numbers are be-
coming committed to the most radical of alternatives-a new so-
ciety. The interest in Marxism has grown enormously in the past
decade. New forms of struggle arise, reflecting deep distrust of
existing institutions and conventional channels as avenues for
remedial action . But discontent is much wider than this . For every
militant draft-resister there are thousands who express their op-
position to the Vietnam war through more traditional means . For
every militant activist in ghetto rebellions there are thousands of
ghetto dwellers who register their resistance and demand in their
own way.
When people seek change they encounter a profound truth : all
41
43. serious political action is a contest for power. The struggle for
change is, in the first place, a struggle for the power to compel
change. The power that now dominates American society is that
wielded by monopoly capital. How can the diverse popular move-
ments, responding to different issues and operating on different
levels of consciousness and action be welded into a power mighty
enough to challenge effectively this reigning power? What kind
of strategy can most swiftly bring about such a coalescence and
guide it best in the struggle against monopoly?
These are the urgent, central political questions in the U.S.
today. They cannot be answered without facing up to another
question. What are the decisive forces in our U.S. society that
can bring about its transformation? The Communist answer is that
the working class is the primary force for basic social change in
our society. And side by side with the working class-indeed, in its
great majority part of the working class-there stands another
powerful dynamic agency for social change that has emerged out
of the unique American social development-the Black people .
Only the combination of these forces possesses the power and
self-interest necessary to transform our U .S. society. Any strategy
for radical alternatives now or revolutionary change tomorrow
that is not based on their combined strength in the struggle is
impotent. Allies will come from other strata of the population
oppressed by monopoly, and these are important, but by them-
selves they cannot successfully confront the power of monopoly .
Without the engine of working class-Negro alliance, really basic
progress is impossible, let alone the achievement of socialism.
Even the achievement of more elementary united action is ques-
tionable. Therefore, it is necessary to examine more closely the
movements and struggles of the working class, the Afro-American
people and their potential allies.
The Working Class
Its Special Role'
The central importance of the class struggle in present-day
42
44. capitalist society is not altered by the growth of monopoly and
state monopoly capitalism . To be sure, monopoly capital oppresses
other classes and social strata, but the base of its profits, the in-
dispensable source of its wealth and power, is exploitation of work-
ers in the productive process. In this lies the special position which
the working class, occupies in the anti-monopoly struggle.
,~
It is the working lass which directly challenges capitalist ex-
ploi`tation_ It is, therefore a car n orce o social pro ess. -,~; , e
But all the forces of social progress are increasingly compelled to C
question capitalism's right to exploit human energies and natural ~~
riches for private profit. And as they do so they tend to gravitate
increasingly around the working class.
The enormous concentration of production and ownership which
underlies the development of monopoly capital is parallelled by the
concentration of workers in huge plants and in the industrial net-
works of giant corporations. This has given them a sense of co-
hesion and organization shared by no other class or grouping con-
fronting monopoly power. Hence they are as a class both the
strongest and the most consistent antagonists of monopoly capital .
The working class is the one class which grows in size with the
development of capitalist production . Today it constitutes the over-
whelming majority of all who are gainfully employed. But is it not
true, some ask, that the new technology is eliminating the great
mass of blue-collar manual workers and replacing them with a
"new class" of technicians, engineers and scientists? Of course, the
proportion of white-collar workers has greatly increased, as has
the proportion of technical and professional workers . There has
also been a substantial rise in service employment. Nevertheless,
blue collar workers are still nearly three-fifths of the total work
force. And the number of production workers, the heart of the
working class, is rising, not declining. Thus, not only does the
working class grow in numbers but its blue-collar and industrial
core endures.
Nor is it true that the main sections of the working class have
managed, through rising wages and growing affluence, to minimize
the impact of exploitation . On the contrary, as we have seen, with
43
45. advancing technology, exploitation has intensified and economic
insecurity has increased, for the better-paid workers as well as
for the poorer-paid. And to this has been added in rising prices
and taxes the economic burden of the aggression in Vietnam . The
enormous economic, military and political advantages which U .S.
imperialism commanded at the close of World War II have largely
diminished. And with this its ability to meet the struggles of sec-
tions of the working class with concessions has also greatly dimin-
ished As the world balance of forces has shifted, as the relative
strength of U.S. monopoly capital has declined, and as the cost of
empire has risen, its range of economic maneuver within the coun-
try has become more and more restricted .
Thus, U.S. imperialism finds cheap conquests increasingly rare .
And, as always, the rising costs of imperialist adventure are shifted
in growing degree onto the workers.
Since 1965 real wages have first stagnated and then gone down .
Taxes and prices continue to rise steeply. To this must be added the
cost in . blood, which, too, is extracted mostly from the working
class and particularly from the black community. And since the
cost of attempted world domination will continue to rise, the
squeeze will continue to be tightened .
Clearly the prospect before the American working class is one
of growing economic pressures and sharpening problems . Work-
ers face increasing hardships imposed by falling real wages,
mounting debts, intolerable speedup and growing job insecurity.
And they face added inroads on their purchasing power and living
conditions through rising rents and growing urban decay .
The working class also confronts a host of new problems arising
from the spread of automation and from a new rash of corporate
mergers. These mergers have resulted in the wholesale emergence
of a new monster: the conglomerate corporation which combines
under a single management the widest diversity of industrial, finan-
cial and commercial firms. The workers employed by these corpora-
tions, divided into many unions, are placed increasingly at a dis-
advantage. New difficulties are created for the trade unions, which
traditional forms of struggle and union structure are less and less
able to meet. They give special urgency to the fight for labor
44
46. unity, structural change and trade union democracy .
Automation has led to the increased growth of a stratum of
technicians, engineers, scientists and a body of white-collar workers,
all closely related to production. This places a new challenge be-
fore the labor movement. It can ignore these groups and abandon
them to the exploiting class, in which case it is faced with a po-
tential strikebreaking force and a conduit for bringing ruling class
ideas into its ranks. Or it can recognize them as potential rein-
forcements for the labor movement and strive to organize them
and infuse them with the spirit of unionism and class solidarity .
A paramount challenge facing the trade union movement is organ-
ization of the millions of unorganized workers . Receiving grossly
substandard wages, these workers have fallen still farther behind in
the race against falling living standards . And in the ghettos and
barrios the great majority remains sunk in mass poverty and mass
unemployment. This is a major problem demanding labor action.
These hard realities compel workers to fight with growing vigor
in defense of their economic conditions. Strikes have become more
numerous, more stubborn, harder-fought . Often they are waged in
defiance of government threats, pressures and intervention, and in
spite of appeals to sacrifice for the "war effort ." Strike struggles have
spread among government employees, in the face of legal restraints
and threats of arrest and imprisonment . Strikes by school teachers
are commonplace . Especially noteworthy are the militant strikes of
Black southern workers . Noteworthy, too, are the long, bitterly
fought struggles of Chicano agricultural workers in California and
Texas. Thus the organized workers, far from being passive, are com-
ing into ever sharper economic conflict with the employers . And
among the unorganized masses, too, there are new stirrings, new
pressures for organization.
The Bankruptcy of "Class Partnership"
As their struggles sharpen, the masses of workers come into ever
more foreeful collision with the policies of "class partnership"
espoused by the top AFL-CIO officialdom. These policies are based
on the false proposition that labor and capital are partners, not
45
47. irreconcilable foes. The more acute the crisis of U .S. monopoly
capitalism and the greater the efforts to make the workers pay its
costs, the more glaring is the bankruptcy of such policies .
By chaining itself to the war chariot of U.S. imperialism, the
Meany leadership is now identified with the most barbarous and
hated war in our history; by entering into collusion with the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency, by accepting payoffs from the military-
industrial complex to provide "no revolution" insurance in other
lands, this leadership has increasingly isolated American labor from
the world labor movement.
By its total subservience to the parties of monopoly capital,
especially to the Democratic Party, it has sapped labor of its po-
litical strength and exposed it to serious political defeats and be-
trayals.
By virtue of such "class partnership" policies it has greatly weak-
ened labor's economic struggles . It has laid the unions open to
anti-labor legislation, compulsory arbitration and government
strike-breaking, all of which are undertaken in the name of the
very war policy to which the AFL-CIO officialdom is committed .
By accommodation to tokenism and gradualism and even more
overt forms of racism, at a time when the demand of Black work-
ers for equality is more insistent and urgent than ever, it sows
deeper divisions in the working class to the advantage of the
corporate exploiters. Against such bankrupt policies there has de-
veloped a rising resistance in the ranks of workers, assuming a
variety of forms.
Increasingly, workers override settlements negotiated by con-
(__..servative union officials and reject their counsels of restraint . Rank
and- y : movements are growing or a - - - r emocracy in the
unions, for restoration of the shop steward system, for greater
autonomy to resolve grievances at the point of production, resorting
to strike when necessary .
A national movement of union members and officers has arisen
to challenge the war policies of U.S. imperialism and official labor
subservience to them. The Alliance for Labor Action, representing
more than 5 million workers, has taken a stand against the war
in Vietnam.
46
48. The growth of Black caucuses challenges discrimination in in-
dustry and in unions, and affords a channel for infusing unions
with some of the militancy of the Black liberation struggle and for
revitalizing the trade union movement.
These increasing signs of a rank-and-file resurgence reflect the
sharpening class antagonisms within the country .
This sharpening is reflected also in the rise of moves to strengthen
unity through union mergers and in recent realignments within
the trade union movement. Among them is the withdrawal of the
United Auto Workers from the AFL-CIO and its association with
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the Alliance for
Labor Action, since joined by the other unions . The ALA advocates
policies opposed to those associated with the leadership of George
Meany. It possesses potential for significant advancement of labor's
interests, provided that the realization of this potential is fought
for through rank-and-file pressures and actions .
All these movements are essential for revitalizing organized
labor and strengthening the leading role of the working class in
present-day anti-monopoly struggles. Central in this process is the
building of an organized Left current within the trade union move-
ment and its alliance with the Center forces in struggle against
the reactionary policies of the Right.
The Fight for Working-Class Unity
In its historical development the American working class has
been distinguished by its militancy and fighting capacity, demon-
strated in countless battles . It has acquired great organizational
skill and competence. But it is hindered by certain politically and
ideologically backward features . Foremost among these is the ra-
cist ideology of white supremacy . Racism has always been a potent
weapon of capitalism in the U .S. to split the working class . It pre-
sents an especially ominous peril to the working class today .
A century ago Karl Marx prophetically warned that "labor in a .
white skin can never be free so long as labor in a black skin is
branded." This warning assumes special force now, when continu-
ing oppression of Black people has become a prime obstacle to all
47
49. social progress. Racism is a deadly poison . It divides the nation and
the working class. It weakens the fighting capacity of white work-
ers and the people as a whole, robbing them of human dignity,
morality and outlook. It corrodes the class consciousness of workers .
Indeed, the very existence of unions as effective instruments of
the workers rides on their determination and ability to overcome
racism. The fight against racism is essential to unity of black and
white workers and the internal unity of unions, without which they
cannot effectively unite to fight the employers . It is also indis-
pensable to establish and cement bonds between labor and the
dynamic Black liberation movement vital to the aims of both . For
labor, the cost of racism now is catastrophic. And the rewards of
black-white solidarity, which can be truly achieved only to the
degree that racism is overcome, are infinite.
The indispensable condition for strengthening the alliance of
labor and the Black community is an uncompromising fight by
white workers against racism and discrimination in industry, in the
union and in the community. Only through such a fight can the
Black community be won as an ever firmer ally of organized labor .
In addition to white chauvinism, the ruling class utilizes a
variety of other divisive techniques . Discrimination against Spanish-
speaking workers, particularly Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Ameri-
cans, who have swelled the labor force in recent decades, is an
extension of a traditional technique of pitting one minority against
another. Divisions are also fostered between employed and un-
employed, between organized and unorganized, between old and
young, between white-collar and blue-collar . The special penalties
imposed by capitalism on women who work for wages tends to
create division between men and women. This is a factor of grow-
ing importance. Millions of women have entered the labor market
because many working class families cannot make ends meet on
the income of one wage earner. Today women make up 37 per cent
of the entire labor force.
In the labor market, women encounter varied forms of dis-
crimination. They are paid lower wages than men receive for the
same or comparable work Though 3.5 million women are now in
unions, they are still employed in disproportionate numbers in the
48
50. largely unorganized, low-paying occupations-office, service, retail
trade, sweatshop industry. Even in these occupations women are
usually paid less than men. Over-all, the median wage paid to
women is only 60 per cent of that paid to men . This discrimination,
which brings billions in extra profits, the capitalist class seeks to
justify through the ideology that women are less competent than
men. Women workers suffer also from an almost total lack of child
care centers, from the absence of paid pregnancy leaves and from
numerous other special handicaps imposed on them.
Black women are chained to the most menial, lowest paying jobs
of all. More than half of them work in domestic and service oc-
cupations. Thirty per cent are domestic workers, compared to less
than 6 per cent of white women workers . For these there is no mini-
mum wage, no unemployment compensation and no job security
of any kind. The median wage of Black women is less than 70 per
cent of that of white women . Forty per cent of Black women in
the poverty income brackets are heads of families who have to
carry the total economic, social and psychological burden of main-
taining the family.
Women are virtually excluded from leadership in unions, even
where they are a majority. Their struggle for equality, for entry
into new fields of gainful occupation, for participation as equal
partners at all levels of union leadership and for defense of chil-
dren, home, family and community is the fight of all labor, it is
the fight for labor's unity, for its increased strength against the
capitalist enemy.
Class Struggle Versus "Class Partnership"
To overcome divisions in its ranks the working class must be-
come aware of itself as a distinct class with its own community of
m'~terests and locked inirreconcilable conflict with the capitalist
class that exploits it.
Historically, the achievement of such class consciousness was
impeded by a class fluidity permitting some hope of escape from
the status of wage worker . This was made possible in large measure
by the American frontier, by the availability of vast tracts of land
opened to settlement, which seemingly offered an "escape hatch"
49
51. from capitalist exploitation .
The frontier is long gone and monopoly's reign has narrowed
other "escape hatches" to the vanishing point But false concepts
persist, especially when they are systematically cultivated by mo-
nopoly's hired spokesmen who proclaim that in America there are
no classes and no class struggle.
Yet today professed radicals echo the line that in America the
class struggle has either vanished or lost its relevance . Objectively
such false notions reinforce the position of "class partnership" ad-
vocates among labor officials. For if there is no. class struggle, there
can only be "class partnership" and class peace.
We Communists emphatically reject such concepts as the logic
of surrender. In a society governed by the exploitation and op-
pression imposed by monopoly capital, "class partnership" can only
mean the subordination of the workers' interests to those of mo-
nopoly. It places a premium on non-militancy and accommodation
with the employers, on taking the path of least resistance.
"Class partnership" introduced the cold-war virus into the labor
movement It split the CIO with the expulsion of the Left-led
unions and with the purging of the Left in other unions . The virus
is "anti-Communism," which divides the workers and diverts their
attention from their real problems and real enemies .
"Class partnership" stifles workers' development, fosters bureauc-
racy and enfeebles democracy. Thus unions become easier prey to
company-instigated government intervention and regulation.
The task of those who wish to fight for socialism is not to join
the spokesmen of Big Business by attempting to write off the class
struggle. It is rather to be a part of the day-to-day struggles of the
workers, to help make it clear that their interests are served not
by accommodation but by struggle . It is to help them become con-
scious of the identity of their individual interests with those of their
class. It is to help them understand that these class interests can
be served only at the expense of the exploiting class-in the end
by its elimination.
Political Independexce-Key Need
The gravest injury done to workers by "class partnership" policies
50
52. is the political imprisonment of the labor movement within the
confines of the two monopoly-controlled parties . This is particu-
larly harmful in a period when the growth of state monopoly capi-
talism increasingly joins economics with politics .
The old maxim that what is won on picket lines can be lost in
legislative halls is more apt than ever. Even more, what is won on
picket lines is also predetermined increasingly in legislative halls
and executive offices as government intervenes in the collective bar-
gaining process to dictate settlement terms and breaks strikes.
Today workers confront what is virtually an interlocking director-
ate between the big corporations and the top echelons of govern-
ment. More and more, the central problems that concern workers
go beyond the narrow limits of "pure and simple unionism ."
Consider the problems arising from the new technology. What
happens to workers displaced or excluded from industry by auto-
mation cannot be resolved solely through collective bargaining and
other traditional forms of economic struggle . These become broad
social issues which must also be fought out on political terrain . Or
consider the growing use of government economic resources to fat-
ten the profits of monopoly at the expense of the working people .
Increasingly, workers are forced to wage a political battle to compel
the use of government resources for their benefit, not for the profits
of monopoly.
The center of gravity in the class struggle is shifting more and
more into the political arena . The conflict between labor and capital
becomes more and more a political struggle.
Yet labor's political instruments are subordinated to parties con-
trolled by capital. Not even the most rabid "class partnership" advo-
cate would dare to propose that a steel corporation executive head
the steelworkers' union . But in the ever more decisive political arena
it is still proposed that workers give their loyalty to parties that, in
the final analysis, are controlled by corporation executives . The his-
toric challenge that faces labor, therefore, is to assert its political in-
dependence, to break out of the monopoly-controlled two-party sys-
tem. It is to become the leading force in a mass people's antimon-
opoly party.
In entering the political arena the workers confront capitalists not
51
53. as individual plant managements or corporations, but as a class . And
to the extent that labor asserts its political independence and fash-
ions its own political instruments it signals growth in its self-aware-
ness as a class. It shows its readiness to replace the fraudulent "class
partnership" with monopoly with a genuine political partnership be-
ween labor and other strata of the population in common battle
against monopoly.
Organize the Unorganized
Among the biggest roadblocks to unity of the working class and
realization of labors true strength as an organized force is the fact
that the great majority of wage and salaried workers in the country
are still unorganized. To organize these millions is a task of strategic
importance for American labor. On its fulfillment hinges the future
progress of the working class in fighting for its interests and its abil-
ity to exert_ its proper weight in the developing coalition against
monopoly capital.
Still unorganized are large numbers of white-collar workers and a
growing body of technical and professional workers . The primary
need, however, is organization of the masses of grossly underpaid
workers employed mainly in agriculture, in service occupations such
as domestic work, retail trade, restaurants, laundries, hospitals, etc .,
and in many factory jobs. Some twelve million of these workers re-
ceive wages so low that even with steady work their earnings remain
well below the poverty level . Concentrated in these poverty-level
areas of employment are great numbers of Black, Puerto Rican, Chi-
cano and Indian men and women, forced into them by the shameful
practice of racist discrimination .
By far the greatest concentration of starvation wages, poverty and
hunger is in the South, the spawning ground of racism and reaction
in our country. The South is the greatest bastion of the open shop,
of rabid anti-unionism. Here the proportion of organized workers
is lowest and working conditions are worst. Here wages of white as
well as black workers are held down far below the national average .
Organization of the South is therefore of paramount importance .
A successful organizing drive in the South would have far-reach-
52
